The present invention relates generally to manufacturing turbine buckets and more particularly to providing continuous visual feedback while performing a polishing operation on an airfoil used for a turbine bucket or a turbine nozzle.
Typically, a polish operator skilled in polishing turbine airfoils will manually polish each airfoil by hand to remove machining marks from the surface of the airfoil to attain its final desired shape. Often the operator will remove too much material from the airfoil during the polish operation. In order to account for the removal of too much material during the polish operation, a machinist that machines the airfoil will add more material to the base shape of the airfoil to account for the excess amount of material typically removed during the polishing. This is helpful in obtaining an airfoil that will be closer to its final desired shape. Despite this effort to bring the airfoil to its final desired shape, this process often results in an airfoil having a blade profile with tolerances that are greater than may be desired. An airfoil with greater tolerances often leads to variation in performance and mechanical properties. In addition, the greater tolerances that result from this polishing process make it difficult to manufacture airfoils having more advanced shapes with higher performance entitlements.